IntroductionI am writing this tutorial as a personal experience with my chinese-made tablet pc. In general it is a 7" MID ePad Android Tablet powered by VIA 8650 800MHz CPU and Android 2.2 Froyo operating system. I believe the built in operating system is supplied by WonderMedia Technologies (WMT) as there are many WonderMedia Technologies applications pre-installed in it and some of them come with chinese user interface which i cannot understand and decide to uninstall later.

I decided to buy this chinese tablet because it was very affordable compared to other currently famous tablet pc such as Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Dell Streak, which price may be 4-5 times higher. And this was also my first time making purchase from overseas which i supposed to be quite risky. But considering the price was cheap (under $100) and if any bad things happened (cheating seller, broken in shipment, undelivered and etc) i just lost some bucks so i finally decided that it was worth to try and i will take the risk.

First EncounterThe parcel was delivered in about 10 days by UPS ExpressSaver which I had chosen when making the purchase. When the courier arrived at my home, I was asked to pay the import duty fee charged by customs and it cost me about $28. But later, after analyzing the import duty payment form, I found out that the handling fee charged by UPS itself cost more than the customs..!! Though I was disappointed, still I was very happy to receive this long awaited tablet pc in good condition. It was well packed in a carton box, wrapped with bubble form and put in a plastic UPS polybag.

I cant wait to open the package and turn on my tablet for the first time. It was a very happy moment like the moment when Archimedes cried out "Eureka!!". The android 2.2 froyo operating system started with an animation of android robot dancing and flying on the center of the screen then booted successfully to the home screen (in Windows we call it Desktop). The next few weeks after I received my tablet pc, I found myself playing games, typing emails, browsing sites, using facebook, playing multimedia contents and installing lots of applications with this chinese tablet pc. To add new android applications to this tablet, you cannot use the regular android app market such as found in Samsung GalaxyTab because it needs a registered google account with the android OS. I think that this chinese tablet is not supplied with legal, registered Android OS. The only way to install android applications to this chinese tablet pc is by downloading .apk extension files from internet, put them in your SD card and install them with the built-in file browser pointed to that SD card. Apk extension stands for Android Package and it is the installer file you need to add application to your chinese tablet pc, idem to msi extension in Windows OS. Running the apk files will install the application. Some places to download APK (android installer) files are:

Nightmare: Tablet Not BootingThere was a night when my gf played angry birds in my chinese tablet pc and the next morning when I turned it on, it quitted booting and the screen froze with the android robot stood still in the center of the screen while on the left bottom corner of the screen showed:

Android TM OS 2.2
Kernel 2.6.32
Build Number V1.3.1

Trial I: UnsuccessfulI had tried a lot of ways to make it boot again including hard power off (pressing the power button for more than 5 seconds), reset the device (pushing a small pin to the small hole at the side of the screen, there are 2 holes: one for microphone and the other for reset button, you should try which one), leave it turned on until the battery drained off (just like pulling a bios battery off a motherboard to reset), try to press combinations of various keys I can find on the tablet pc. They all failed to fix this chinese tablet pc and made me start thinking that all chinese products are lack of quality. I searched google and read a lot of forum posts but find no solutions to my problem. I also tried to upgrade the firmware by copying new firmware to \script\ folder on the root of my SD card and put the SD card in its slot before turning on the tablet pc. It failed too because the screen did not react nor show anything, just freezing on the first boot screen with the android robot posing still in the center of the screen. Since then I always hate that robot. It was a frustrated experience and I started to read from forum posts that it could be a problem with the dead NAND drive in the tablet or the overheating/overcharging battery which may cease working.

Trial II: Failed TooI tried to contact the seller and asked for solution to my problem, hoping that I could fix it myself without sending it back the country where it came from because if I did that, I had to bear the two ways shipping costs as one of the warranty terms and frankly they were not cheap and the customs may charge me another import duty fee when the repaired package arrived at my doorway. Overall the shipping costs may cost me the same price as a new tablet pc.

The seller is good and very cooperative, one of their sales team, a woman, told me to try to upgrade the firmware and provided me with 3 links of the firmware archive files. The 3 files were part of a RAR file which were splitted. The links were hosted in a chinese file sharing site :

As instructed, I downloaded all the files and used WinRAR to extract all the firmware files to \script\ folder in my micro SD card (some people call it TransFlash). So if my micro SD was loaded to drive F:\ then all the firmware files were stored in F:\script folder. Then I removed my micro SD card from the card reader and put it in the tablet micro SD slot while the tablet is off. With the power adapter kept charging to ensure that no power failure during firmware upgrade process, I turned the tablet on, hoping to get a message or warning of the firmware upgrade process like the one described in one forum about the firmware upgrade process. The first frame I saw on screen was the standing still android robot again, but after a minute, the screen did not shift to other frame about warning nor message. Curious, I waited longer (20 minutes - 30 minutes) and there was still nothing on the screen. For me, it meant there was no hope for my tablet, it had totally died. I was very upset and threw it to a corner of my house. "Rubbish" I mumbled. Due to my busy activities at that time, I had almost forgotten it and did not even try to contact the seller again to tell her about the failure.

Trial III: SUCCESSTwo weeks later, I had been through the busy times and that time I tried to make another contact to the seller again. Another sales team (not the one who handled my case before) replied my message. She asked me about the type of tablet I purchased and offered to upgrade the firmware again, but this time with a different firmware, not the previous two files. She said that was a new firmware suitable for my chinese tablet. I did not believe her anymore and said that I had tried upgrading the firmware given by her coworkers before and it failed. I also told her that there might be a problem with the internal NAND drive or overheating battery or processor as all tablets are sealed with no air circulation for its internal electronic components.

She told me not to worry (but I actually DID..!!), and asked me if I wanted to try her suggestion first or sent the tablet back to them immediately. Considering the high two-way shipping costs plus another customs import fee, I finally made myself try her suggestion with the latest firmware. I downloaded it from a link she provided:

The first and second lines were folders, the last one was a file. I tried to view the content of "wmt_scriptcmd" in Notepad and found out that the content had a lot of line pointed to FirmwareInstall\*.* files. I made a summary that this "wmt_scriptcmd" was probably like "autorun.inf" file in Windows OS which directed execution to certain files in FirmwareInstall folder. There was no "script" folder anywhere in the archive, contrary to what I knew about the firmware upgrade process which involving "script" folder.

Next, I copied all the contents of M009S_06.11 folder to the root folder of my micro SD so they became:

F:\wmt_scriptmd
F:\FirmwareInstall\*.*

Then I removed the micro SD from card reader and inserted it in the tablet micro SD slot. For safety and to make sure there was no battery failure during the firmware upgrade process, I plugged in the power adapter. After that I turned on the device and as usual, the android robot showed up. I did not expect this, but maybe the robot knew I hated it, this time it was just awhile and the screen shifted to next message showing the upgrade process. "Eureka..!!" I finally can upgrade the firmware, but still I did not know what would happen next, would the firmware upgrade process fail in the middle? and if the upgrade was successful, would it fix my tablet ? Here is the screenshot of the firmware upgrade process:

On top of the screen there is a message "WM8650 Android2.2 FW Upgrading ..." while on the bottom of the screen there is a progress bar and a message "DON'T REMOVE INSTALLATION MEDIA" which changes to "PLEASE REMOVE INSTALLATION MEDIA" after successful upgrade.

If you are interested to see the video of the firmware upgrade process, i have successfully documented it here:

The upgrade process was quite fast, it just took less than 4 minutes to finish. After the process finished, the screen displayed a message to remove the micro SD and restart the tablet. After restarting the tablet, here came again the android robot, but it was just standing for a while and then proceeded to dance on the center of the screen. I was really happy to find out that this android robot had eventually come to life again after 2 months of inactivity. What an experience.. I believe that there are still a lot of people out there who may have the same problem like mine, frustrated with unbootable chinese tablet device. I personally hope this article will save your time, effort and money to fix your unbootable chinese tablet by trying what I did with my tablet.

Summary: Never Give UpThe key is to use the correct and suitable firmware for your tablet, though all the firmwares are built with Android OS but they may vary by brands and models. One firmware may be suitable for a tablet but may not be suitable for others. To look for the correct firmware, I recommend you to refer to your seller or product manufacturer, either by using their online website or by contacting their customer service personally.

In certain cases when you have successfully flashed the new firmware and made the android tablet boot normally again, but find out that the touch screen is not functioning and not reacting to any of user touch input, it is caused by a different touchscreen decoder chip you have in your tablet. To make it works for your tablet, you need to edit some of the firmware files. You can try this solution pointed out by one of our commenters ShibuVas:

For WM8650 models follow this to resolve touchscreen issue. There are many different versions of 8650 tablets using different touchscreen decoder chips - vt1603 or uor615x or uor615 or vt1609 or it7260 or others. The following example shows you how to modify the touchscreen decoder chip model in firmware files from vt1603 model to uor615x model. Make the following changes to files in the SD card prior to flashing:

file FirmwareInstall/packages/fs_patch/root_patch/system/default.prop :find the line ro.wmt.touchpannel=0 and change it to ro.wmt.touchpannel=1

Please note if the touchscreen still does not work for you, i believe that you may have other touchscreen decoder chip type which we have not discussed here. I suggest you to ask your seller for the tablet specification especially the touchscreen decoder chip so you can alter the firmware files based on it.

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This eBook is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied. The author or www.uniquestuff.net should not be held liable for any defects, problems, data lost and any related issues arisen which may occur during or after the upgrade process. The $ 2.99 you pay to purchase this ebook is not an insurance.

Though the percentage of successful upgrade is more than 80%, it is highly recommended to use the guides only on a broken, not booting, frozen on startup tablet which has no longer been covered by warranty.

The firmware download links are hosted by third party servers, therefore there will be no warranty that all the firmware files are still available for download, depending on the terms and conditions of the hosting sites. Some hosting sites store the files in their servers forever, but some other hosting sites may delete the files after a certain period of inactivity, regular clean up, copyright violation or other reasons as described in their terms and conditions of usage.

This ebook guide is provided with no support, but you can use the comments section below this article to share and discuss solutions to your problems with others.

User Reviews:

eiffel: it works.....thank you

DougieLB: Thanks for the fix, it's the best $2.99 we've spent in ages. Our MID tablet is unfrozen, the touch screen works and it's saved us the price of a new, "more" reliable tablet like an iPAD. Once more thanks very much.

kinu: Hi Admin, I was able to get the tablet up and running.... so now the problem is the WI-FI connection is not funtioning or unable scan to network. can u help me to fix this problem. Thanks for your help. (WiFi problem fixed at the end)

Ron Stewart: I did it! I successfully fix my WM8650 Android 2.3 tablet after a month of desperate feeling. I am totally a newbie and think it will be difficult to do it myself. But after slowly reading and understanding the steps in your ebook (trying to figure out everything..LOL), i give it a try on my tablet.First i didnt make it because of the wrong firmware i chose, but after trying the third firmware, i make it back to life again. Thanks a million!

joan adkins: Thank god i found this site! I get my tablet back to life againthanks to the complete firmware list in your ebook. U are my savior!

Paulfaulk: THANK YOU SO MUCHyou have saved my bacon with your guideI owe you one

Sat K: Hi Admin, I was able to get the tablet up and running.... Thanks for your help.

Ramon: Man! I had the same problem and fixed it ! Was tired and gived up just like you! Thank you so much bro! :D

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